


They Say It Gets Easier

by ancestrallizard



Category: Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, animal cruelty, bc Ozawa is a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 18:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancestrallizard/pseuds/ancestrallizard
Summary: A look at the first kills of the major characters of Shin Megami Tensei I.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I set two rules for myself for this, each section only got 200 words or less, and I could only use one comma per sentence.

Pascal fought Orias in the foul-smelling halls of the hospital without a doubt as to what he would do when the battle ended. What he had to do. It was a natural extension of thousands of years of instincts from the animal he used to be, and eons of instincts from the demon he’d become. So when he crushed Orias’s skull between his jaws, and blood and bone soaked his tongue he did not doubt.

But he did remember. He remembered Kazuya, how small and vulnerable he’d been ever since he was young, and how vulnerable still was. He remembered how Kazuya’s mother was killed when Pascal had been too small and weak to do anything but hide in the back of the house. He remembered, and resolved to protect. 

 

Yuka tried to outrun the end of the world. 

She hadn’t had a chance to look for Yuji before the bombs started to fall. Once they had, she was just one of many in a mob trying to find shelter that would withstand the carnage around them. Explosions and screams engulfed the air around her, but she did not think about that. She ran faster than she’d ever run before to a store across street.

A girl ran deadest beside her, so close she was almost stepping on her feet. At some point she ran too close, and her shoulder bumped into Yuka. She shoved her away hard on instinct. The other girl stumbled to the side, and shards of shrapnel laced through her torso. She was dead before she hit the ground.

Yuka froze in the sea of chaos and stared at the girl’s body. Before her mind registered anything other than surprise dulled by shock, another bomb fell not an arm’s length away and blew her to pieces. 

 

Ozawa needed a new gang for the new Tokyo. So he did what he’d always done, and stole someone else’s.

He found the shantytown where a local gang leader and his girlfriend were living, and went there under cover of night. He found a vantage point far enough away that no one would see him and summoned demons. They lurched between humanoid and canid, and they stalked toward their target silent as ghosts.

Shouts and gunshots rang out, but to no avail. He saw one of the demons drag the body of the gang leader by the head and wrench it to the side. The girlfriend slipped out through the side of the shredded tent and tried to run. She was fast, but the demons were faster; She was knocked to the ground by the other hound-demon. The crunch of bone rang out before she screamed. 

Ozawa remembered summers when he was a child. He’d often pull the legs from still-living bugs and watch them squirm powerless on the searing asphalt until the sun or ants finished them off, Or until he got bored and stepped on them. Both then and now, he felt a giddy joy.

 

Yuka first killed a week after escaping the Messiah convent in the dead of night. A thin and desperate looking person with a broken knife tried to attack her when they thought she was sleeping. Yuka didn’t know if the stranger just wanted to steal what little food she had or wanted to kill her outright. She didn’t care. 

She cast an arcing zio spell that struck them square in the chest. They were knocked into the dirt, where they seized for a few seconds before falling still. 

Her dreams the weeks after the incident were strange. She saw the charred corpse of her attacker, but she also saw new things, too real to be only her imagination. She saw a frenzied crowd that called out for her blood. She saw a boy she trusted, whose name she’d forgotten but wanted desperately to remember. She saw herself die. Each fragment was wrapped in pain and fear and death, and she always awoke with the stench of burning human remains in her nose. 

She didn’t use a zio spell again for a long time afterwards. 

 

Takeshi shoved past Kazuya when he hesitated and effortlessly lifted Ozawa by the throat with his new strength. He was older than the thirty years should have made him. He weighed nothing, and the slightest squeeze of Takeshi’s hand would have pulverized his neck and trachea. Takeshi didn’t know how he was going to kill him, but he knew he wanted to make it hurt for all the times Ozawa and his cronies had hurt him.

The gang leader had cringed and gasped weirdly after his demon was destroyed, and beads of sweat trickled down his liver-spotted skin when Takeshi lifted him and shook him hard. But the half-demon youth didn’t understand what was happening until the tremor in Ozawa’s hands stopped and his cataract-coated eyes rolled back in his head. 

Takeshi yelled in rage with a now unfamiliar voice and hurled Ozawa’s body against the wall. But it was too late. There was no way to tell if the impact with the wall killed him, or the heart failure did. The sound of his bones breaking like matchsticks did nothing to fill the sudden, yawning void in Takeshi’s spirit.

 

Yuji didn’t know what came over him when they all faced off against three Gaeans in one of the endless stretches of Tokyo wasteland. Maybe it was the betrayal from Takeshi abandoning them. Or jealously that Kazuya got Yuka back while his own girlfriend was still missing and more than likely dead. Or frustration at being stuck in a dying world he was powerless to fix.

The mazan spell he cast must have fed of his maelstrom of emotion. It thrashed and cut at the air with almost palpable malevolence, knocking their attackers off their feet and pushing Kazuya and Yuka back as well. One of the Gaeans twisted around as he was blown away. His head came down hard on a block on concrete.

The surviving attackers ran away. Yuji stared down at the remains of what he did, and his eyes started to sting. Kazuya recognized what was happening even before Yuji did, and pulled him into an embrace. Yuji lifted shaking arms to return it as ugly, broken sobs tore from his chest. He cried until his tears washed tracks into Kazuya’s armor, and it was time for them to move on again.

 

Kazuya had been escaping the hospital alongside Yuji, armed with nothing but a pocketknife Yuji had given him. They’d almost made it when Kazuya rounded a corner and walked face-first into a guard.

The guard smelled like sweat and antiseptic. He looked their age. There was an off white scar that stretched from his right cheek to his jawline. His wide brown eyes moved from Kazuya to Yuji as his hand moved to his gun. Kazuya swung wildly, hoping that he and Yuji might get the upper hand if the guard was stunned.

He did not remember the knife clutched in his fist.

That’s what he tells himself afterwards.

Hot blood from the man’s cut artery sprayed Kazuya’s face. He choked out a rattling groan and collapsed. And all Kazuya thought as he writhed in agony was, _Better him than me._ Relief and self-loathing flooded him in a torrent. As Yuji dragged him away to the entrance, he felt he was leaving part of himself behind. He would always be standing over the dying young man, with shaking bloodstained hands and a useless apology on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> None of these kids are alright.
> 
>  
> 
> Feel free to check out my tumblr, I post about my first playthrough of soul hackers when I can, though that isn't very often: ancestrallizard.tumblr.com.


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